Whiteread comes home

Rachel Whiteread's most famous sculpture in Britain is House – a cast of the interior of a condemned house in the East End that, despite becoming something of a lightning rod for debate about contemporary art, had an incredibly brief life, being destroyed fewer than three months after its completion in January 1994. She's made permanent public sculptures for cities overseas, famously the Holocaust memorial at Judenplatz in Vienna, but there's still no permanent public sculpture by Whiteread in this country.

That's set to change: arts charity the Art Fund has commissioned Whiteread to make a permanent sculpture for the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Details are hazy, since the gallery has yet to gain planning permission, but it's hoped the piece will be finished in time for the Olympics, and will sit at the facade, above the main entrance, where a sculpted frieze was planned for the 1901 building but never realised. It will take inspiration from the "tree of life" theme of the building's architecture.

Race for Olympics posters

To a dinner hosted by art collectors Freddy and Muriel Salem in honour of the Chisenhale Gallery, now showing an exhibition of video and sculpture by James Richards at its HQ in the East End of London. I chatted to Carl Freedman, who runs Counter Editions, which produces the kind of artists' prints that are the nearest most of us will get to a contemporary art collection. Counter Editions will be publishing limited-edition prints of London Olympics posters, which have been designed by artists such as Bridget Riley, Fiona Banner, Howard Hodgkin and Chris Ofili. The designs will be unveiled in early November, and the prints will sell like hot cakes, so join the mailing list at countereditions.com to get first bite. Good news for cheapskates: the designs will also be available as mass-produced posters.

Shechter and Gormley duet

Ever since he burst on to the dance scene, Hofesh Shechter, the Brighton-based, Israeli-born choreographer, has made a name for himself with macho, visceral, jagged works. His latest project, however, comes without dancers. He's working with Antony Gormley – another artist obsessed with the role of the body in space. Shechter is writing a score for 100 drummers and a band of 30, for which Gormley is creating a sculptural environment. The work, called Survivor, will be premiered in January at the Barbican in London. "With a frozen image of his own body," says Shechter, "Antony at times expresses more than I can with the many living bodies of my dancers. He's a choreographer of space and emotion."

Dyer's dinner gaffe

Novelist, essayist and columnist Geoff Dyer recently warned of serious name-dropping, before describing his joyful feelings at sitting next to Martin Amis at a dinner hosted by William Fiennes. He then revealed that he had asked Amis to sign a handful of books he had brought for the purpose, an action that caused him to become, for the other guests, "an object of both derision and envy. The situation was further complicated by an undertow of regret. Having brought six books, I explained to Will, I might as well have brought the lot so that I could experience the glow of completion." Dyer gamely records Fiennes's answer: "'Of being a complete plonker, you mean?'"